Mexico: Mobilise the masses and call a general strike to stop the electoral fraud

It is clear to everyone that Lopez
Obrador of the PRD won the elections in Mexico on Sunday, but the official
results are being withheld and every attempt is being made to deny what has
happened. The only way of making sure that the right wing accepts the victory
of the PRD is by mobilising the workers and youth who massively voted for Lopez
Obrador.

Despite the fact that the majority of the exit polls gave
the victory to Lopez Obrador the IFE (Federal Electoral Institute) and Fox are
refusing to recognise the results of the elections and are manoeuvring by delaying
their official publication, declaring on the Programa de Resultados
Electorales Preliminares (PREP) that they could not define a clear outcome
given the supposed narrowness of the results.

Parametria gave Obrador a 3.5% lead over Calderon; Telesur gave
42 points to Lopez Obrador and 38 to Calderon; Covarrubias put the PRD, Party
of the Democratic Revolution, at 37% and the PAN, National Action Party, at
34%. According to the website “Casa del Plan de los 3 Puntos”, Harvard
University gave the victory to Obrador by 7 points. A closed poll by the
newspaper Milenio gave Obrador 37% and Calderon 36%.

The IFE has now explained that the overall calculation of
the votes is in the hands of the 300 electoral districts in the country. The
results will not be released until next Wednesday.

Another element in this manoeuvre is the self-proclaimed
victory of the PAN candidate, Felipe Calderon.

It is evident that with this manoeuvre the bourgeois are
hoping to gain time to manipulate the figures and obtain a result that would
allow them to impose Calderon through fraud. The PRD and Lopez Obrador have
publicly stated that they won the elections by “at least 500,000 votes.” These
are the words of Obrador himself, who in addition described the results as
“irreversible”. Before this Obrador had also asked that the victory of the PRD
be respected.

Again the bourgeois is hoping to impose its will on us by
means of a fraud even bigger than that of 1988 when the “fall of the system”
prevented Cardenas from assuming the presidency and instead imposed Salinas.

The cost of not overturning this fraud in 1988 was extremely
high for the workers and peasants of Mexico. Salinas pushed through a savage
programme of privatisations, attacks on wages, cuts to social services, etc. And
after Salinas came Zedillo, and after him Fox, who continued and extended these
anti-working class policies. All of this has meant increased misery,
unemployment and a lack of opportunities for the masses.

The imposition of Calderon will mean the continuation of the
exact same policies, and this is something we cannot tolerate. The workers’
movement has been on the rise over the last few years, and at this moment this
is expressed in the struggle of the students at the Oaxaquena teacher training
college and that of the miners. This means that there is no doubt at all that
the necessary conditions exist to force the regime to recognise the victory of
the PRD. If Lopez Obrador were to make a decisive call against the fraud, the
masses would respond with great enthusiasm. The masses are extremely angry
after years of attacks on their living and working conditions and would like to
throw the PRI and the PAN into the dustbin of history and demand action.

Furthermore, several unions and workers’ federations had
announced their support for the PRD candidate even before the elections. Lopez
Obrador must base himself on these workers and ‑ we insist ‑ call for a
mobilisation and a general strike against the fraud, which would unite the
demands of the different sectors in struggle. The trade unions and the PRD have
in their hands everything they need to make the bourgeois tremble with fear.
That is why it is urgent to put up a genuine show of force make it clear who is
who in the country. Lopez Obrador and the other leaders do not have to yield to
the blackmail of the frenzied campaign of the IFE, Fox and the printed and
electronic media about being “civic minded”. For this gang of hypocrites “civic
mindedness” means that the workers must accept the fraud and that we resign
ourselves to six more years of attacks.

The PRI, despite supposedly questioning the electoral
process, is also taking part in this game of fraud. The PRI, arguing that the
election results were very close, applied pressure so that there would be no
official announcement of the results by the IFE, justifying and giving the
regime the time it needed to manoeuvre. Fox has shown that he heads a weak
government. He was defeated by the masses in his attempt to privatise the
energy sector, in his attempts to impose Value Added Tax (IVA) on medicines and
food, and other counter-reforms. The same thing happened with the desafuero [impeachment]
of Lopez Obrador. This means that this electoral fraud can also be defeated.
Mobilisation against the fraud is the key, over and above the legal challenges
before the Federal Electoral Tribunal (Trife).

The workers must make sure that the IFE does not count the
votes without there being any pressure from the streets. We must show Fox and
the bourgeoisie that they are very mistaken if they think that by imposing the
PAN in a fraudulent manner they can achieve some sort of stability and social
peace. The opposite will be the case. Only when Fox and the ruling class fear
that they are losing control and that things could go further, will they be
forced to accept the victory of Lopez Obrador.

Lopez Obrador must identify where his greatest points of
support are, and base himself on these to launch a struggle against the fraud.
An analysis of the the results we have from the report of the PREP issued at
3.55am, shows that in those states where the workers have been in struggle over
the last few weeks, the PRD got a good result. This was the case in Oaxaca
(159,935 votes for the PAN, and 409,484 for the PRD), Chiapas (139,791 for the
PAN, 300,696 for the PRD), Tlaxcala (136,000 for the PAN and 176,092 for the
PRD), and Guerrero (130,799 for the PAN and 371,380 for the PRD).

In other normally safe PRI states, the PRD obtained a
significant increase in its vote. An example of this is Puebla, where in the
past in election after election the PRD always came in third place with an
extremely low share of the vote. Now the share of the votes is as follows: PAN,
620,359; PRD, 514,922; PRI, 330,258. And in all the states where the PRI had
always won, now the PRD is in the lead as can be seen in Quintana Roo (PAN
71,481 and PRD 84,517) and in the State of Mexico (PAN 1,618,266 and PRD
2,225,385).

The common denominator in all the states where the PRD
significantly increased its vote and in those where it has taken the lead is
the important influence of the trade unions such as the CROC and the UNT, two
union federations that called for a PRD vote. Also, in the suburbs of the State
of Mexico and the DF (Federal District - which the PRD has swept away from the
PAN and where the majority of the workers of the federal administration live,
many of whom are members of the trade unions that called for a vote for Lopez
Obrador), there are many housing estates and whole colonies of electricians, miners
and railway workers.

However, in the State of Michoacan, where the PRD should
have received an overwhelming majority, for the moment its share of the vote is
not much better than that of the PAN. The PAN received 411,629 against 456,181
for Lopez Obrador. This tendency clearly reflects the price paid for the
right-wing policies of the PRD governor Cardenas Batel. However, we have to
understand that things could have gone much worse for the PRD had the miners of
Sicartsa not launched their “no votes for the PAN” campaign and if an important
sector of the Michoacan teacher training college students had not called for a
vote for Lopez Obrador.

It is important to emphasise these aspects of the election
results because they reveal the strength of the class which could be counted on
in a struggle against the fraud. It is also important to understand that the
strength of the working class is not only numerical, but also qualitative, and
this qualitative strength, which could paralyse the country, is on the side of
Lopez Obrador. The power to defeat the fraud lies in the hands of Lopez Obrador
and the leaders of the trade unions. We must mobilise around the struggle
against the fraud, organise meetings, establish committees in defence of the
elections and pressurise the leadership of the PRD and the unions to call for
militant action, such as a general strike. We cannot and we must not allow Fox
and the ruling class to get their way once again! No to a new 1988!